Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval?” asked the Apostle Paul of the community in Galatia. “Am I trying to please people?”
Twenty-nine years ago this coming Tuesday—as in two days from now—John and I got married. It was a wedding, in all of the glorious messiness that attends such events, with various kinds of drama being enacted between and within families. I know y’all know what that’s like! In our case, one of the dramatic sub-plots was the expressed disapproval of various parents. My mother, for example, let me know that she thought John was too quiet, and she pointed out that he was going to lose his hair. I had my own concerns, like any nervous bride, but these were not among them. I wasn’t seeking parental approval for my love of John; I knew that he was worth it. Add three decades and subtract some hair, and he’s still worth it.
What or who is worth it for you? Worth risking the disapproval of your parents, your supervisor, your community of your friends? This is a good question for a Sunday morning, because worthiness is embedded in our language for what we do at church. The word worship comes from the old English “worth-ship.” You can think of it as being rather like the word “friend-ship” in grammatical structure and in practice. Worship, like friendship, develops and deepens over time. Sunday morning is our weekly opportunity to be reminded—time and again—of what’s really worth it for us.
The centurion we met in the Gospel of Luke today knew what was worth it for him. It was the life and health of his highly valued slave. Whether he was talking about his economic value to his household or about the affection he felt for the slave we don’t know, but it’s clear that the centurion—someone who was well versed in the social order—was playing outside of the rules. When a military leader humbles himself before an itinerant rabbi—and on behalf of the lowest status of person— pay attention. The normal social relationships, or what we might call the human-approved behaviors, seem to have been suspended in favor of something Luke clearly wants us to understand as being of greater worth.
“I am not worthy to have you come into my house,” the evangelist records the centurion’s friends as saying. He wasn’t dissing himself; he was just being honest about the social context. As a gentile, he didn’t belong to the same club as Jesus. We know from the first part of the passage that the centurion did have a certain kind of human approval from the Jewish elders, because he had given money for their synagogue. But that’s not what his friends appealed to when they came to Jesus for help. What made him worthy of Jesus’ attention was not his status, but his need.
The centurion was a man who knew what human authority was, and he knew that in the case of his slave, it wasn’t sufficient. Rather, he needed the one whose power derived from God’s own authority. We might take a play from the centurion’s humble playbook when we invite Jesus’ authority into our houses and our hearts, because it changes everything.
Unless… we refuse to let it change us. Did you notice the uncharacteristic anger with which Paul begins his letter to Galatians? Grace and peace, his usual salutation, appears only after he goes out of his way to establish his own credentials—his God-given authority—and then he immediately turns to scolding the believers. They’ve been persuaded that they must assume Jewish practices in order to be faithful Jesus-followers: that’s the contrary gospel he’s arguing against. Galatians reads a bit like reading a bad performance review, which makes is tempting to think that this letter is directed to someone else. Because surely we wouldn’t return to the practice of circumcision or Jewish dietary laws, would we?
Paul’s theological argument was not primarily about specific cultic practices, however, but about the fact that the authority of God—manifested in the unqualified and unlimited welcome of Jesus—was being undermined by the quest for approval within human social systems. The community was being divided based on who was in which dinner club, so to speak. And if we think that has nothing to do with us, let me remind you that its not a far distance from judging people for their dietary practices to judging them for their age or skin color or gender or language. The moment any of us marginalize any other class of human being, we marginalize the authority of God in our lives.
So the spiritual risk that Paul identified for the Galatian community then is no less risky for us here and now. Whenever we invest our energy—our worth-ship, I might say—into seeking after human approval, we are worshipping something other than God. Who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, wrote Paul.
Its primary season in the state of California. And while I’m not suggesting that our current political landscape could be in any way considered an evil age, I am conscious that we could easily spend every waking moment watching approval ratings rise and fall if we wanted to. We live in a culture of continual and shallow affirmation. And it’s not just politicians who seek 24-7 approval. I don’t care so much about what my mother thinks of my choices these days—largely because she’s no longer living—but it doesn’t mean I am not seeking human approval. I want people to think that I’m smart and capable. I hope my facebook postings get a lot of likes. I want you to like this sermon. This is not all bad, but I—like all of us—need to have the humility to ask whose approval I am seeking, and who is left out when I get it.
Those are the questions of a lifetime, and I believe that they take a lifetime of worship—of re-centering ourselves week by week on what is most worthy—to stay true to the gospel that welcomes all. What Luke and Paul both make clear is that God’s approval does not require that we do anything for God. Rather, we are called to choose with and for God who loves and welcomes soldier and slave alike, and who asks nothing of us but to trust in God’s authority.
What makes us worthy of approval, of healing, of salvation is one thing and one thing only. We simply have to believe that God is there for us. Easy to say, hard to do. But we can begin by listening to what our scriptures promise. You really are worthy of everything that God in Jesus Christ has done and will yet do for you. The almost unbearably good news is that divine love anticipates us, surrounds us and precedes us, no matter where we fall in social order or who approves of us. And when we believe this, let me assure you, we are healed.
